


the price you pay

by Silvereye



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble Sequence, F/F, POV Second Person, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/pseuds/Silvereye
Summary: “Aren’t you afraid?” you ask Comfort during a phone call. “I told you, I have no idea why I’m beaning people. I might hit you if we played against each other."“Eh,” she says.In Season 7 of blaseball there are two important ongoing events for Jaylen: she keeps beaning her opponents without knowing why, and Comfort keeps calling her.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers/Comfort Septemberish
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	the price you pay

**Author's Note:**

> I arrived at the cultural event of blaseball mid-season 7 and was immediately charmed by the crowd-coordinated act of necromancy (even if my actual team is the Tigers). So I had to write fic for Jaylen.
> 
> Not betaed, we die like it's the Ruby Tuesday. I know basically nothing about the actual game of baseball, but I am love blaseball. So.

You cannot endure silence, after your return. You feel almost at home on the field, or in the locker room after the game, but the split-seconds of quiet before the game make you check your pulse. You can almost remember being dead then. It hurts.

The less said about the silence after the game, the better.

You go clubbing with those of your team that you remember from before, Tot or Allison or Lang or Arturo. Or Ron, when both of you can bear the subtle differences in the other. Alternate realities. What can you do.

It never entirely helps.

* * *

There was this joke about the Millennials – _why is their record so bad this season? Because they were checking their Instragram on the field._ It’s assholish. It keeps haunting you now.

_You_ check your phone, when you’re not asleep, on the field, in a club or practicing. You don’t expect anyone to call – this is the twenty-first century – and no one ever texts either. So usually you check your social media, where you are adored, or someone much like you is, and then make yourself stop. For the next five seconds, anyway.

For Peanut’s sake. You’re not playing for Millennials.

* * *

"Not that I mind," Allison says one evening when you’re staggering from a shitty club towards the subway stop in – New York? Are you in New York now? Yeah, probably, and trying to blasphemously slum in a club where no one cares about blaseball – "but why do you keep hitting the batters?"

Why do you?

You have no answer, so you ask: "Think it’s unsplortsmanlike?"

"Oh, please," Allison says and grins. "I have a nail bat. I can’t talk."

But back in the hotel you keep thinking about the blue aura around those you’ve hit. Why do you do this?

* * *

The thing is –

The thing is that you know the answer when you’re on the field, pitching, fully intending to throw the ball in unsplortsmanlike manner at a batter who frankly does not deserve this. Everything becomes clear, the way it only does on a stage or on the field, and your body becomes a well-oiled machine with a single goal. You throw. You rarely miss.

Your memory has always been a mirrored thing. You can describe being on stage with the band, but you cannot remember the feeling. This is the same. You remember a clarity. Not its contents.

* * *

You fly out to Texas a little early. Time enough to waste, so you go and haunt a random high school game, out of nostalgia. No one ever recognizes you if you wear a hoodie.

Then Comfort Septemberish leans against the barrier by you and says: "Thought you were dead," for a greeting.

You shrug and discard your first response: _yeah, me too_. "Thought you were playing for the Jazz Hands."

She makes a gesture that might be interpreted as _touché_. "Feedback. You know how it is."

You nod. There’s a comfortable silence. The game below goes into tenth inning.

* * *

You’re up against the Tigers thirty days into the season. And the thing is – the thing is that the Tigers are not against you specifically, but you know they don’t like necromancy. Something about being from Hades, something having gone horribly wrong for one of their batters before the team made it to the ILB, or simply their words, Never Look Back. You don’t know which.

They don’t say anything – you’re all professionals here, after all. But it feels different.

And then the clarity hits, sudden and blinding like a floodlight switched on in the middle of a Seattle rainstorm.

* * *

You get two days of peace. On the thirty-second day you get out of the shower after the game and there’s a grave silence in the locker room.

You check your pulse without meaning to. Then, because they’re still looking at you, you ask: "What happened?"

Allison hands you her phone. It’s the front page of ILB News. _Three dead during Moist Talkers-Tigers game!!!_

Moody Cookbook and Mclaughlin Scorpler from the Tigers and Elijah Bates from Moist Talkers. You’ve never beaned Bates. The aura spread anyway and he got incinerated.

All you can think is: oh. That’s what it does.

* * *

You’re up against the Tigers again not even a week later, two games of three in their stadium. The Garages’ captain offers condolences. You don’t. How could you? 

The Tigers don’t say anything, but their fans do. You could feel the hate emanating from the stands even if they were silent. It’s the same feeling you get from the crowd during a concert, except backwards.

_Never look back_ , they chant, mostly, but they could as well say _You did this_ , and it wouldn’t be wrong.

The Tigers take two out of three. You don’t mark anyone for death.

Good enough.

* * *

Your phone rings one evening about midway through the season. You immediately drop it and fumble for it in the flickerlight of the TV turned to splorts channel. It’s either narcissism or white noise, okay?

You don’t know the number, but you pick it up anyway.

"Hi," Comfort Septemberish says.

"Oh. Hi?" you answer.

There’s a silence. On the TV screen, Frasier Shmurmgle is batting.

"I really suck at phone calls," Comfort finally says. "But I wanted to know how you were doing. It’s been a season already."

You drop onto your bed and chuckle, or sob. "Yeah. It has."

* * *

Day seventy-one is a bad one for the Tigers again. You have an alert for the ILB news, so you can follow it in real time: Yazmin Mason dies, the aura chains to Frasier Shmurmgle, Shmurmgle dies and it chains to Curry Aliciakeyes.

You can’t remember how exactly the Tigers’ Aliciakeyes is related to the Magic’s Aliciakeyes. Aliciakeyes is an uncommon name, so it’s not a coincidence. Cousins? Siblings twice removed?

There they are, their teams up against each other, both of them haloed by the blue aura.

You wonder if they’re going to have to watch each other die.

* * *

"Aren’t you afraid?" you ask Comfort during a phone call. "I told you, I have no idea why I’m beaning people. I might hit you if we played against each other."

She doesn’t say anything. It would feel like a confirmation, but by now you know she does suck at phone calls. Silence means nothing, and the crackle of the line makes it not a silence at all.

"Eh," she says.

"Eh?"

"Well, yeah. The Spies would have to make it to the playoffs, which we probably won’t this season. And we’re mortal. Anything could kill me."

"That’s morbid."

"Probably."

* * *

The Garages make it to the playoffs. The Spies don’t, and neither do the Tigers. Those last two facts help a little. You can’t hurt the Tigers more than you already have and at least this season you won’t hurt the Spies at all.

Comfort is waiting for you after the first game of the quarterfinals. You haven’t seen her since Texas, so you freeze a little. She’s gorgeous. It hits you like a truck.

"Let’s get a drink," she says and smiles like she doesn’t care that you beaned three Shoe Thieves only hours ago.

"Okay," you say faintly.

* * *

You thought you were going into the hotel bar. But she takes you to a high-end place instead, the kind that’s all polished hardwood and dim lighting and no prices on the menu – if you need to know you can’t afford them. Not that it matters, you and Comfort are both blaseball superstars, but it’s the principle of the thing.

"Is this a Spies haunt?" you ask, because this place could be straight out of a Bond movie and you gotta joke. You have nerves, apparently.

"Nah," she says. "Haven’t told them about it."

You nod and sip your drink.

* * *

She’s not staying in the same hotel as the Garages. You walk her back to hers and hesitate in the lobby. You… want. A lot of things. But the lobby is all glass walls, all well-lit and that means paparazzi pics would make it to ILB News post-haste. If they already haven’t. _Comfort Septemberish of Houston Spies attempting to subvert the notorious Hotdogfingers?_

"This was fun," she says.

"Yeah," you say.

Then she kisses you, heedless of the glass walls. Your brain short-circuits and you kiss her back, reckless and breathless.

She draws back, smiles, says: "I’ll see you soon."

* * *

She doesn’t quite. But the Garages go all five games of the quarterfinals against the Shoe Thieves, the only quarterfinal that is so evenly matched. The time between the games is a media circus, exhausting as usual.

You go to the James Bond bar (it’s not called that, but who’s counting) again, because you both liked it. Afterwards, she walks you to your hotel. Teams should alternate the home field advantage.

You kiss her in the lobby. Then you weigh the awkwardness of Allison overhearing something and congratulating you next morning against what you really want.

"Come upstairs," you say.

* * *

"You checked your pulse again," she says at some point afterwards.

"Sorry. I guess it got too quiet. That’s when I start doing it." You don’t have the TV on, obviously. Maybe that’s why. You’re too used to the white noise of the splorts channel.

She hums a little and traces a line across your ribs.

"I hate it," you whisper. "When it’s quiet I almost remember being dead. It hurts. I guess it fucking sucked."

"Maybe," she says. "Or maybe it was so nice on the Null Team that you miss it."

And that’s all it takes to remember.

* * *

The following day is the first game of the semifinals. The Garages are up against the Mild Wings and you’re pitching.

The Garages are hosting. You walk onto the field, into the ear-splitting cacophony of _Plug the bands_ and _Jayleeen_ and _Wings beer blaseball wings beer blaseball_ and _Summers_. It’s a beautiful day, clear but not too sunny. You smile.

You haven’t studied the day you were brought back. Way too weird. But you do know that the Garages didn’t do it alone. The other teams helped, and the Mild Wings were one of them.

You’re going to say thanks.


End file.
